You accuse lukeprog of being misleading in taking a quote from a mere "librarian", and as we all know, a librarian is a harmless drudge who just shelves books, hence

it doesn't confer the kind of expertise that would make it surprising or even very interesting for Taube to have been wrong here.

I accuse you of being highly misleading in at least two ways here:

1. in 1960, a librarian is one of the occupations - outside actual computer-based occupations - most likely to have hands-on familiarity with computers & things like Boolean logic, for the obvious reason that being a librarian is often about research where computers are invaluable. A librarian could well have extensive experience, and so it's not much of a mark against him.

2. Mortimer Taube turns out to be the kind of 'librarian' who exemplifies this; the little byline to his letter about "Documentation Incorporated" should have been an indicator that maybe he was more than just a random schoolhouse librarian stamping in kids' books, but because you did not see fit to add any background on what sort of 'librarian' Taube was, I will:

   ...He is on the list of the 100 most important leaders in Library and Information Science of the 20th century.[1] He was important to the Library Science field because he invented Coordinate Indexing, which uses “uniterms” in the context of cataloging. It is the forerunner to computer based searches. In the early 1950s he started his own company, Documentation, Inc. with Gerald J. Sophar. Previously he worked at such institutions as the Library of Congress, the Department of Defense, and the Atomic Energy Commission. American Libraries calls him “an innovator and inventor, as well as scholar and savvy businessman.”[1] Current Biography called him the “Dewey of mid-twentieth Librarianship.”[2]

   ...Mortimer Taube received his Bachelors of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1933. He then pursued at PhD in the same field from the University of California at Berkeley in 1935.

   ...In 1944, Mortimer Taube left academia behind to become a true innovator in the field of science, especially Information Science. After the war, there was a huge boom of scientific invention, and the literature to go with it. The contemporary indexing and retrieval methods simply could not handle the inflow.[2] New technology was needed to meet this high demand and Mortimer Taube delivered.He dabbled in many projects during and after the war. In 1944 he joined the Library of Congress as the Assistant Chief of the General Reference and Bibliographical Division.[4] He was then head of the Science and Technology project from 1947-1949.[2] He worked for the Atomic Energy Commission, which was established after “the Manhattan District Project wanted to evaluate and publish the scientific and engineering records showing the advancements made during the war.”[2]

   ...Mortimer Taube also worked heavily with documentation, the literature pertaining to the new scientific innovation.[2] He was a consultant and Lecturer on Scientific Documentation and was even the editor of American Documentation in the years 1952-1953.[2] In 1952, Taube founded his own company, Documentation, Inc. with Gerald J. Sophar and two others.[4] Documentation, Inc. was the “largest aerospace information center” and did work for NASA.[4] Here Taube developed Coordinate Indexing, and important innovation in the field of Library Science. Taube defines Coordinate Indexing as, “the analysis of any field of information into a set of terms and the combination of these terms in any order to achieve any desired degree of detail in either indexing or selection."[6] Coordinate Indexing used “uniterms” to make storing and retrieving information easier and faster.[2]

   ...Taube had split coordinate indexing into two categories, item and term indexing.[7] It used punch cards and a machine reader to search for specific items or documents by terms or keywords.[7] Documentation, Inc. also brought forth the IBM 9900 Special Index Analyzer, also known as COMAC.[2][8] COMAC stood for “continuous multiple access controller.” This machine handled data punch cards, used for information storage and retrieval.[2] It made “logical relationships among terms.”[2] Even though Documentation Inc. started as a small company, it soon grew to well over 700 members.[4]

   ...Even though his technology seems to be the forerunner of OPACs and computer cataloging systems, Taube himself personally didn’t like the idea of computers taking over modern life.[4] He believed that “computers didn’t think.”[4] Even though he is an important figure in Information Science, he also seemed to remain interested in philosophy. He was writing a book on the subject before he died.[4]

   So to summarize: he was a trained philosopher and tech startup co-founder who invented new information technology and handled documentation tasks who was familiar with the cybernetics literature and traveled in the same circles as people like Vannevar Bush.

   And you write

   A librarian is a fine thing to be, but it doesn't confer the kind of expertise that would make it surprising or even very interesting for Taube to have been wrong here.

   !

An upvote for correctly contextualizing what Taube wrote, and a mental downvote for being lazy or deceptive in your final paragraph.